With all the emphasis on fire in our PSKs, I feel the need to address tinder. While matches, match cases, fire steel, lighters, and everything to napalm have been beaten to death, let's talk about what burns.

Good tinder should be able to be lit fairly easily (I consider one match fairly easy), put off enough heat to ignite the kindling, and burn long enough to make this task as easy as possible. There are tons of pre fabbed tinder trinkets out there. Some of which are very useful and work quite well. Others are simply as waste of time. Lets put those aside for a moment and discuss what we might have on our person (PSK or otherwise) that would make good tinder.

1- Paracord.-- Everybody who's burned the ends togeather knows that once it's going, it burns well. I've found that with about 3" of cord as tinder, it's quite easy to start a fire. It can be lit with a simple kitchen match. We all have this, or probably should have it in our PSKs. If not, put about a foot or so in your pocket fire kits. It will come in handy!

2-Paper-- I know, I know. Everybody knows paper burns. What I don't think everyone realizes is how much paper they have on them. What about a little TP? <img src="images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" /> What about the blank pages in the book you brought along on your camp out? Receipts in your wallet? Think about it.

3-Cotton-- I know again. Vasaline and cotton balls. It's a great idea, and it works! It doesn't take much vasaline to make it happen either. Also, think about the clothes you have on. I've used the bottom edge of a t-shirt before, just make sure it's not dyed. The dye wil slow the burn down.

Do you guy's have anything else? I'm sure you've all tried something before. What do you have in your pockets now? Let me know, it might help out in a pinch! <img src="images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

--Luke

I keep a "ranger band" cut from a bicycle tire tube around my lighter. It saved my butt in a Rocky Mt. snow storm I got caught in on a hunting trip: can only light it with a flame, but once lit... look out. I had enough hot flaming rubber to get thumb and wrist size twigs going in the damp!

I made fire starters out of wax, lint and wood shavings. It worked just fine.

I think that cotton "laced" with KY works the best but it's messy. I carry couple of tampons and small pockets of KY in my FAK. This way I can use them as blood stopers or burn medicine (not the best but will work). When needed by mixing those two together you have perfect fire starter.

Matt

I carry paracord around the psk and some cotton twine inside.

Used to carry nylon twine inside because of the strength but my step-father showd me a trick that he used to use as a kid. Using an old flint-wheel lighter (mini bic without the butane) with cotton string wrapped around he could light as many fires as you might need. The charred end of the cotton twine would catch the spark really well and would burn at about the same rate as a match. So out with the spark-lite and I went hunting for 100% cotton twine. (that was harder to find than I expected it to be)

Hold the twine in place with an appropriately sized rubber band. and you have tinder and kindling.

Also I have ranger bands wrapped around the psk under the paracord and over it.

Also I carry a 1 oz bottle of the hand sanitizer which is mostly sterno with perfume.

Don't forget pocket lint

Beeswax lip-balm can be used to juice up the cotton obtained from your bandanna (just make sure you bandanna is dry first.)

TP burn before use.
<img src="images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />

Steel Wool and a D battery. In fact, just plain steel wool works great to "hold" a spark while you build up a small fire on top - very fine (0000) works best.

Luke:

Doug has some very good things to say on tinder elsewhere on the site. Also, there are several earlier threads on the subject, too. As for me, I carry cotton balls and a few Spark-Lite tinders in my PSK.

On a Scout camping trip up to St. Francisville earlier this month, I was showing the boys how to properly build a fire. The boys said that the other dads just piled up the wood and sprayed it with lighter fluid, so I thought I'd give them a real lesson on fire building - I gathered the wood, built the teepee and, using a gauze pad and my Spark-Lite, I got the fire going in under a minute. The boys were amazed. So were the the other dads.

Oh yes - welcome to the forum, and Go Lions!

.....CLIFF

Minime: I was going to add Purell (hand sanitizer) to the list but you beat me to it. I tried it once as a "ha ha" and was amazed at how easily it caught <img src="images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" /> I was even able to lght it with my Strike Force after letting it spread itself out a bit. As you said, it might as well be sold as Sterno.

Chris

Fatwood works well even when wet. I shave the stick with my blade at 90 degrees creating shavings that are nearly powder. Usually one spark does the trick. On another forum several individuals reported success using Fritos, not the baked variety, though, as they do not contain enough fat.

I tried the fritos and taco chips - works great! I just don't usually carry them.

When I am wandering in the woods I usually pick up a chunk of birch bark (I'm in NH, USA and there are always birch here). Carrying this with me till needed or till I get out. Just habit. Birch bark is just about the best kindling you could get. Doesn't catch the spark that well tho.

There is some discussion of tinders, as well as other aspects of firestarting, in the classic "Playing With Fire" thread by Evolute over on the Swamp Rat Survival Forum:
http://www.swampratknifeworks.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=11;t=000069

Interesting read. Thanks for sharing the link.

wax paper is one of the best firestarters I know of. Another is a fine slice of an old rubber tire. Cotton or pocket lint is a food tinder, with the above as a good fire lighter!

They seem to have gone away from including cotton wool in aspirin bottles, but if you're carrying aspirin in your FAK, it may not be a bad idea to rectify the oversight <img src="images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I got into survival training a few years back when I suggested to a group of fellow pilots that a talk on wilderness survival would be an interesting lecture for our monthly meeting, and promptly found myself "volunteered" to give it <img src="images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> I bought my first copy of the SAS Survival Guide and used it as one of my props, listing all the wonderful things about it. Someone in the audience pointed out that you could even tear it up and use the pages to start a fire; one of the other pilots (ex-military, I'm sure) immediately stood up and said "NO! You burn your log book before you burn your survival manual." I'll never forget that moment.

Minime: Have you had any luck with the "tinder fungus" that grows on standing birch? I haven't been able to get that stuff to burn at all even after drying.

Also, I can get the curliest of black birch bark to ignite from a spark if I twist it a few times to fray the fibers. It still takes a 8 to 10 strikes with the Strike Force though.


Chris

never any luck with lighting fires with fungus. Quite a bit of luck lighting my spirit with fungus but that's a different story <img src="images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

I'll have to try the curly black birch with the spark-lite.

Also I have great luck with the finest twigs from standing evergreens - not sure which evergree. Simply get a bunch of them by strippiing you hand along the larger branch and they all come off then bunch them up and put a little bit of spark-catcher tinder (cotton ball, milk-week, lint, dry punk, etc.) in the middle and throw a spark in. The dry twigs are small enough to catch from the smallest flame. I do this while holding them together. When they catch they become somewhat of a torch which can be jammed into the teepee of kindling to good effect.

Here's an idea I just got recently - I just tried it and it seems to work great, if you have access to one of those devices for laminating business cards.

I took a business card and a cotton ball. I pulled out the cotton ball until it was very thin, approximately the size and shape of the business card, and placed the two of them back to back in a laminating pouch (GBC 7.0 Mil Business Card Size, 2-3/16 x 3-11/16, although in principle any size will do). Making sure that none of the cotton wool extended past the sides of the business card, and that the business card was centred in the pouch, I put the whole assembly into the cardboard carrier and ran it through my laminating machine (GBC 40).

The result was a laminated business card with a barely noticeable - umm - "topographic effect" on the reverse. The theory was that the cotton wool was now effectively waterproofed, and I could carry it in my wallet and always be assured of having at least one piece of waterproof tinder at all times.

Would it work? Well, as luck would have it, this being Sunday night, I was doing a laundry, so I stuck the laminated card in one of my shirt pockets and tossed the shirt in with the load.

It looked fine and dry when it came out, but the proof of the pudding is in the burning, as they say. <img src="images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> I took it into the kitchen and cut it in two with scissors. I thought I'd be able to pull it apart, but I had to cut along the sides to get the two halves apart. Then I put the piece with the cotton wool in the bottom of a disposable aluminium dish on top of the stove (making doubly sure there was nothing flammable within reach) and applied a shower of sparks from my Blast Match.

Initial result was a little disappointing; the cotton wool caught fire, all right, but after a few seconds it died away, leaving half the cotton wool unburnt. (I still had the other half of the card, though.) It occurred to me that I should have used the paper from the business card to augment my fire-making efforts. Since I still had some unburnt cotton wool, I struck another shower of sparks from the Blast Match and the rest of the cotton wool ignited; this time, though, I held the edge of the half business card in the flame and it ignited. Within a few seconds, flames were soaring up about 4 to 6 inches as the fire ignited the plastic laminate. I didn't time it but I'm pretty sure it burned for over a minute. (Caution: I just tried to repeat the process with the other half of the assembly and the cotton wool didn't burn long enough to ignite the business card, so either it's not as effective as I had hoped or it takes a little bit more practice. I didn't "fluff" the cotton wool up after separating the card, and I had it lying flat instead of standing vertical, both of which I'm sure robbed me of precious seconds. Also, I probably should have tried "priming" it with wood chips or dead twigs.

So I'd put this in the category of "last resort". (Otoh, it does provide you with one whole dry cotton ball, which should be enough to get a fire going.) If, however, you have something in your wallet that you want laminated, and you have access to one of these devices, it adds virtually nothing to the weight of your wallet.

(I don't intend to try this with a vaseline- or alcohol-impregnated cotton ball. For one thing, I'm afraid it would void the warranty; and for another, I'm not sure how I'd explain it to the insurance company....) <img src="images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Kinkos has lamination sheets at 11 1/2" X 8" along with lamination machines. You buy the lamination sheet and then you are allowed to use the lamination machine yourself.

I suppose if you glued the cotton wool to the back of the business card/certificate/wallet card etc. (with, e.g. GlueStick) it wouldn't be too hard to laminate a bunch of them and then cut them apart with a scalpel.

As a follow-up, just before going to bed I decided to try again with the remaining half of my business card. I looked at the remnants of the "cotton wool" side and realised there was a fair bit of unburnt tinder. I pulled it off ("picked away at it" is a more apt description) and got a couple of "pinches" of cw. I tossed on a couple of wood shavings and struck another shower of sparks from the BM. This time (3rd time lucky?) I was able to ignite the paper on the business card; it burned for well over a minute, with the peak flame about 4 inches high for at least 10 to 20 seconds. So even after 2 botched attempts, there was enough cotton wool to get a decent fire going. <img src="images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />

The bark of some kind of (Birch?) tree was used by native american indians to start fires. It was multicolored bark that flakes away along the length of the trunk. The friend that told me this tore off a "leaf" of it, swished it around in a puddle, shook of the excess water, and it lit up from 3 seconds of a bic lighter flame. It then flared up enough to force him to drop it. It fell onto wet concrete and he had to stamp it out. Sure wish I could remember the species of that tree. Anybody?
Thanks,
Run

It's the Paper Birch found in northern and boreal woods. The bark contains natural resins that will ignite if it gets wet as the resin itself is water proof.

Don't remove bark from a live tree unless it's a true emergency. I carry a few pieces in my fanny pack that I removed from a downed log on the ground. Stripping bark off a live tree is unsightly and may eventually kill the tree as the stripped bark girrdles the tree. Especially trees near well worn paths. BTW, I went of the trail about 100 yards to collect from my tree, which had been blown down during a hard storm.